Wedding 2/3

Hello!!! So it's another month and another wedding. This time it is the wedding of one of my oldest and dearest friends Antoinette.

The weekend was beyond beautiful & once again, I had the honour of making the wedding cake. 

Unlike my usual wedding cake orders, the only guidance I had was to keep it simple. There was no tasting, no design conversations, very very little. In fact, I don't think I even saw a picture of what she might like. It was perfect! I got to make the cake that I would love to have! :)

Each tier had four layers of vanilla cake sandwiched together with strawberry, blueberry & raspberry flavoured buttercream icing. 

Flavouring buttercream with real fruit is the best thing ever ever ever. You get the flavour and colour naturally, along with tiny pieces of fruit to balance out all the sugar you're eating!

Vanilla Butter Cakes (adapted from Amy Atlas's Sweet Design Book)
Make about 8 quantities for a very deep 6", 8" & 10" cake.

1 stick/ ½ cup (114g) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 vanilla pod (the seeds from)
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk
1. Adjust oven to 350oF/ 180oC/ Gas Mark 4. Beat together the butter & sugar until they are light & fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add one egg at a time along with the vanilla until they are thoroughly combined.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. With the mixer on a slow speed add the flour mixture alternatively with the milk. Beat for about 3 minutes until the cake batter is smooth.
3. Divide the cupcake mixture between the cupcake cases and bake for about 17-20 minutes minutes until the a skewer entered into the centre comes out clean.
4. Leave to cool fully before topping with a generous amount of buttercream.

Strawberry Buttercream Icing

200g fresh strawberries (or raspberries or blueberries) crushed

500g icing sugar sifted

185g soft unsalted butter

Cream together the butter and icing sugar until soft and fluffy. Slowly add the crushed fruit until fully mixed.

(The fruit can make the icing a bit watery, especially the blueberries & raspberries so you don't need to crush it as much & keep a close eye as you're adding it).

You might be interested to know that I caught the bouquet AGAIN!!! Anyone would think I planned it! 

Peace & Love

xx

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Honey I Love You

It's that time of year again and Valentines Day is near. For me, Valentines Day is special because it's my son's birthday but I guess in a way over the years it's lost the whole romantic meaning....

Sugar cookies in the making...

As I've named this year the year of love, money and happiness, I'm focussing on what I want rather than what isn't. So to start with, I made a little collage of my ideal Valentines Day gifts (take note people).

Pictures courtesy of  Pintrest

Love letters, flowers and balloons, what more can a girl want from her Valentine? 

Sugar cookies of course! 

Sugar Cookies Recipe (American style adapted from Sweet Designs by Amy Atlas)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups plain flour

1. Combine the sugar, butter and salt light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Finally add the flour (sifted) until it it's just combined.

2. Roll the dough into a large circle 1/4 inch thick in between two sheets of baking or parchment paper. Leave to chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

3. Cut out the cookies with a cookie cutter and place them on one of the sheets of baking paper at least 1" apart. Leave to chill for a further 1 hour. 

4. Pre-heat the oven to 180oC (gas mark 4). Bake until light golden, 6-12 minutes depending on the size and shape of the cookies. Rotate halfway through cooking so that you get an even colour. Leave to chill on the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

I covered these delicious sugar cookies with peach coloured royal icing (click here for a video recipe) and sprinkled them with love hearts. They lasted about 5 minutes and didn't even make it out of the house! Not to worry, this month my baking will be all things love and someone will get to be the recipient! :)

Peace & Love

xx

ps - if anyone wants to spoil me this Valentines, please do!!!!!

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Sugar Cookies

One of my Instagram friends thislakshmi, asked me the other day whether I did decorated cookies as she doesn't see pictures of them on my feed. The answer to that was no, not because I don't want to, but because I'm intimidated by piping icing! 

It sounds silly but I see loads of really cool cookie treats that I want to make but then I wimp out because I don't think it will look any good.

When she asked me about it, I realised that I'd let that fear stop me from actually improving my skills because I didn't even start! 

How often do we do that, become so paralysed by a fear of failure that we don't end up doing, creating or having the things that we desire?

Armed with the revelation that fear was holding me back from making beautiful cookies, I turned to my new baking bible - Amy Atlas's Sweet Designs and made some sugar cookies (recipe above). Then I made myself some royal icing,  (homemade royal icing by the way,  is so much more delicious than shop bought or ready-made stuff) and got to piping. I was so excited that I didn't even use any piping nozzles!

It's not the neatest but it's a start and I have now conquered that (irrational) fear of royal icing! I've got loads of ideas for what I want to do next so watch this space!

We gain strength and courage and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot. Eleanor Roosevelt

What will you do today?

Peace & Love

xx

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Princess Cakies

Baking for little girls is such fun! This was a birthday cake for my beautiful niece Ellie who turned 3 not too long ago. I'd been dying to try out the ruffle buttercream effect and figured that this was as good a time as any :).

The birthday girl

The cake was made using the Amy Atlas vanilla cake recipe as it's currently my favourite. I've been searching the net to find the recipe online but without success so far, and I'm not sure if it would be wrong for me to put it up myself. So for now you will need to get her book, Sweet Designs for the details (it's definitely worth it!)

My son & Ellie

Happy Birthday to yooooooou!

Watching the children around me grow up makes me realise just how much time is flying. I still can't get my head around the fact that I have two of my own! Just the other day I was a little girl running around eating cake and now I'm a mum with responsibilities! I reckon that your brain stops maturing at around 20 and then you spend the rest of your life watching events unfolding, wondering 'How did that happen?!' 

My niece and nephew

I am making it my goal to savour every day and to embrace this thing called 'getting old'. I love it in fact. As I get older, I get wiser and more in control. I also get to relive my childhood and make beautiful Princess cakies :)

Peace & Love

xx

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